Filtering using the JOIN instead of WHERE

Question

In SQL (MSSQL, Oracle, etc., whatever), when joining tables, what is the gain from adding a filter to the JOIN statement instead of having it in the WHERE clause?

i.

Answer 1

As a human (rather than an optimizer) myself, when maintaining a query I would look for a join condition in the JOIN clause and a search condition in the WHERE clause.

Of course, you need to strike a balance between performance issues and code maintenance issues. However, my first priority is good logical code in the first instance then optimize as necessary.